Paterson Tension With Obama Growing

New York Governor David Paterson has had a rough few months. First his state’s budget hit a critical deficit point, requiring swift and unpopular action from him and the state’s legislature. Then, his poll numbers took a nose dive, hitting depths this week of 27 percent approval. And then, late last month, Paterson was told to drop his 2010 reelection bid by the White House, which feared that a Paterson loss—likely at this point, to say the least—would create political challenges for the Obama administration. Winter might be settling into New York, but it’s not usually this cold inside the governor's office.

Paterson is reasonably exasperated, to the point that he even reached out to Saturday Night Live for a comedic boost. (He claims appearing on the show would help it "get the ratings," but nothing is for free in show business.) And he's gone on the defense. “No person who is in elective office has said to me, ‘you shouldn’t run for office next year,’” he’s said on several occasions to defend his enduring plan to seek reelection next year. That’s because the request for Paterson to throw in the towel was delivered by a senior White House staffer, and then later echoed by N.Y. Rep. Greg Meeks. But through the game of telephone, the message stayed intact: "You can’t win. Let us put up a more formidable candidate against the GOP."

Spats like these among members of the same party are usually kept quiet, as they reflect poorly on everyone involved and give the opposition fodder for alleging a party disconnect. In this case, though, it seems deliberate. Two unnamed senior administration officials spoke to The New York Times, which broke the initial story, expressing the president’s skepticism—a calculated move to publicly bully Paterson.

It’s hard not to take something like that personally. One would expect the relationship between the first black men both from the same party to hold their respective offices to be a tad warmer than ice cold. In a childhood game of finger-pointing, Obama would say that Paterson started it. Aside from his chilling unpopularity, the governor didn’t do the president any favors when he made comments over the summer about how black politicians are treated unfairly after Obama tried for months to paint race as a nonissue.

Some signs suggest that Paterson and his team are indeed taking the public lobby campaign personally. During an interview yesterday on Sirius radio, Paterson claimed that lots of state and national Democratic party leaders still want him to run, attempting to push Democratic support from other sources back in Obama's face—certainly not a plea to make up. Then, asked whether he’d meet tonight with Obama, who’s attending a fundraiser in New York, Paterson gave a polite deferral. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to because right now I’m really almost unilaterally focused on this budget issue," he told the interviewer, sounding as if he'd, um, be too busy washing his hair. The growing public awkwardness certainly can't be good for either man, or the Democratic party's chances next year. While Obama has the more prestigious address, Paterson still has leverage of distraction, and has earned Obama some ire from New York voters who insist he stop meddling. It's enough to wonder who will give in first.